Astros fall victim to Cardinals' home runs

Astros second baseman Jose Altuve can't avoid getting roughed up by onetime Oklahoma State football signee Matt Holliday while turning a double play in the fifth inning.

Astros second baseman Jose Altuve can't avoid getting roughed up by onetime Oklahoma State football signee Matt Holliday while turning a double play in the fifth inning.

Photo: Brett Coomer

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Astros starter J.A. Happ had to sweat out 92 pitches over five innings, allowing six hits and six runs.

Astros starter J.A. Happ had to sweat out 92 pitches over five innings, allowing six hits and six runs.

Photo: Brett Coomer

Astros fall victim to Cardinals' home runs

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The Astros, who spent five days making the wonderful and novel discovery that nothing builds a winning streak like the home run, experienced the opposite phenomenon Sunday. Nothing kills a winning streak quite like the home run.

The long balls and postgame handshakes finally belonged to somebody else as the St. Louis Cardinals left the yard twice against J.A. Happ and thrice overall in an 8-1 victory at Minute Maid Park.

Just the two runs on the first homer would have been enough to end quite a few hot streaks the Astros were on, including a season-high five-game winning streak. They also fell short of a return to .500, which seemed unlikely a week ago and will have to wait at least two more games.

The Cardinals also reversed the Astros' out-of-nowhere home run dominance on this homestand. Before Sunday, the homers numbered eight for the Astros and zero for the visiting Mets and Cardinals.

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But St. Louis got it started early against an ineffective Happ, whose ERA rose to 5.24 with five earned runs among the six runs he allowed in five innings.

Allen Craig followed a two-out walk to Matt Holliday with a blast in the first inning, and after the Cards pieced together single runs in the second and third, Tyler Greene struck with a two-run shot in the fourth.

Up in the zone

Some days, it's the walks that hurt Happ, as he's always been a high-walk lefty. On other days, when he gets the ball over the plate and is living up in the zone, he's hit to pieces. Sunday, it was a bad combination.

"A couple of the walks definitely hurt, and they had some good swings," Happ (2-2) said. "Greene put a good swing on that ball. It was kind of up and away, but it was probably into his swing path, too. It kind of wasn't a good pitch, and I got beat on a couple of big hits."

Happ was up much of the day, which has been a constant nuisance he has tried to overcome. The focus for the 6-6 hurler has been on keeping the ball down, and that eluded him.

"He's been throwing the ball so well and keeping the ball down in the zone," manager Brad Mills said. "He's been really effective, and today it just didn't seem like that was quite it."

When Happ left, the Astros were in a big hole, but the St. Louis shots continued.

Greene day

Greene, from his No. 8 spot and without much of a résumé in his four seasons, had himself a season in a day. Not only did he double and homer off Happ, but he also went deep off Fernando Abad in the eighth inning for his first career multi-homer game.

The lefty reliever Abad has allowed four home runs in his 42⁄3 innings this year and 12 in his 431⁄3 career innings.

The Astros provided little resistance against Adam Wainwright (2-3), the former All-Star who had struggled this season in his return from Tommy John surgery. None of their seven hits in seven innings against Wainwright went for extra bases, and they walked just once while striking out seven times.

Tough to hit

"You have to prepare for him as if he's going to be on, because he's got more of a track record of being on than not," said Brian Bogusevic, who went 0-for-4 but prevented a fourth St. Louis home run with a leaping catch at the wall to rob David Freese. "We're going to try to work him into favorable counts and work him into a mistake or two if it presents itself, but he didn't make too many today. He was real tough on us."

Carlos Lee scored the Astros' only run on a wild pitch in the fourth inning, when the deficit was 6-0 and plenty of streaks and trends were on the way out.